Rapid population growth, lack of access to food and water and increased exposure to natural disasters mean more than 1 billion people face being displaced by 2050, according to a new analysis of global ecological threats. With the world's population forecast to rise to nearly 10 billion by 2050, intensifying the scramble for resources and fuelling conflict, the research shows as many as 1.2 billion people living in vulnerable areas of sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia and the Middle East may be forced to migrate by 2050. Compiled by the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP), a think-tank that produces annual terrorism and peace indexes, the register noted that displacement in countries like India and China will mostly be fuelled scarcity of fresh water in the coming decades.